“Email blasts” was a long-used term for sending a mass email to every subscriber on your list and is now mostly a thing of the past due to a greater demand for personalized messaging that engages subscribers.

But sending personalized messages to each subscriber can seem challenging right? How do you send the right message to the right person at the right time?

These statistics are eye-opening when it comes to the significance of customer engagement and the importance of overcoming this challenge.

In this action-packed post, we’ll share 6 insanely effective tactics you can begin using today in order to engage your email subscribers.

1. Create dynamic and storytelling content

Content that engages in storytelling and inspires its readers provides a unique value to their online experience. When creating email campaigns, it’s important to include relevant content that relates to your brand’s message and the interests of your subscribers.

Catrinel Bartolomeu, Head of Editorial at Duarte, put it best when she wrote, “We’re wired for well-told narratives…even though credibility counts for a lot, you ultimately must make an audience feel things to compel action.”

Connecting with your subscribers in a personal way through interesting content can encourage them to convert into customers and explore your products.

An example of engaging content is OkCupid’s article, A Dictionary for the Modern Dater. OkCupid appealed to its customers by helping them navigate through the different dating terms people use today in the confusing world of online dating. This dictionary is both humorous and slightly risque for a brand – it doesn’t directly promote OkCupid or appear as an ad – instead, it works to connect with its readers.

When a brand is able to connect with their audiences on a personal level, they are able to build a long-lasting relationship and drive customer acquisition and conversion.

2. Use powerful subject lines

Inboxes are constantly flooded with personal, professional, and promotional emails each day. While we sift through our inboxes, deciding which emails to open and which ones to skip over or delete, we usually make these decisions based on the subject lines we see at first glance.

It’s crucial to create subject lines that appeal to your readers and lead to higher engagement rates. Strong subject lines are short, descriptive and promising. You can explore different styles like informational, personal, clever, how-to, etc.

3. Create polished email designs

If an email is difficult to consume, chances are that a reader will stop engaging with it. Having a clear, crisp and creative email design is essential to customer engagement. Using eye-catching and relevant images with short blocks of copy will encourage customers to read through the entire email.

It’s not only important to have a strong desktop email design, you also need to make sure that your newsletters are easily adaptable to mobile. In 2016, over 68% of emails were opened on a mobile device. Using responsive design for mobile is crucial to grabbing your reader’s attention in an engaging way.

Your readers want to digest content that is most relevant to them and their interests. Adding their name in the subject line is a great start, but there are even more ways to engage in a personal way. They want to feel as though you understand who they are.

Using segmented lists can enable you to create personalized and targeted email campaigns across different demographics. Through using accurate data, you can send individualized email messaging and behavior triggered emails as a way to improve your email personalization.

5. Segment your email lists

Emails with personalized subject lines generate a 760% increase in email revenue from segmented and targeted campaigns. Segmenting your target lists allows you to personalize emails and connect with your audiences in a powerful way. Information that is relevant to one customer, might not be relevant to another. Personalizing emails based on targeted lists will improve your email engagement rates.

One of the best ways to effectively segment your lists is through capturing data about your customers in a signup form. You can gather information from subscribers like geographic location, gender, marital status, profession, age, and interests. You can also segment lists based on their buyer’s journey or recent email activity. For example, you can send every new customer a Welcome Email, and send dedicated customers VIP email content.

After developing segmented lists, create separate email campaigns that are most relevant to each list and their interests. This increases the relevancy and personalization of each email you send, which in turn, can increase your ROI.

6. Use email marketing automation

In order to create segmented lists, send out targeted email campaigns and measure their effectiveness, you need to have a reliable email marketing automation tool in place. Marketing automation allows you to nurture leads through customer journeys and convert them into customers.

These tools allow you to implement workflows and send out both timely and consistent targeted email campaigns that are relevant to your subscribers. Analytics show you what is working and what isn’t working. With these tools, you are able to see which email campaigns perform the best across your different segmented lists as well as which content your subscribers care about the most.

You can create customer profiles, A/B test different subject lines, measure email conversions, monitor open and click rates, as well as increase your overall ROI through using marketing automation. Having these tools in place make it easier to create longer lasting engagement with your dedicated subscribers while also engaging with your new ones.

An effective email marketing automation tool will allow you to focus your time on engaging with your customers using the tactics discussed here while measuring how each tactic is impacting your overall engagement rate.

Wrap up

Customer engagement is crucial to customer acquisition and customer retention but it can serve as a huge challenge when you don’t fully understand who your customers are, what they care about the most or how you can connect with them at scale.

You can break down the barriers that 44% of marketers said they face when looking to increase overall customer engagement, through using the right content, design, email personalization, segmented lists, and email marketing automation.

Once you start using these tactics, remember to constantly reevaluate each one – your customer journeys and customer profiles may change over time. As their needs and interests evolve, your content and email engagement tactics will need to evolve along with them.

This blog provides general information and discussion about email marketing and related subjects. The content provided in this blog ("Content”), should not be construed as and is not intended to constitute financial, legal or tax advice. You should seek the advice of professionals prior to acting upon any information contained in the Content. All Content is provided strictly “as is” and we make no warranty or representation of any kind regarding the Content.

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